


Burned like one burning flame together

by lesyeuxverts



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Community: lewis_challenge, Gen, M/M, Mirrors, Possibly Pre-Slash, Trope Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-25
Updated: 2016-04-25
Packaged: 2018-06-04 12:02:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6657040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesyeuxverts/pseuds/lesyeuxverts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The mirror holds the maybes and the impossible dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burned like one burning flame together

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the fab mods at lewis_challenge for running a fun challenge! My trope was "mirrors." 
> 
> Apologies to Tennyson and Shakespeare for shamelessly stealing their lines.

_She has heard a whisper say,_  
_A curse is on her if she stay_  
_To look down to Camelot._

The mirror holds the maybes and the impossible dreams. James stands against it - he has watched for half a century, for countless years - his forehead rested against the burnished silver, his hand splayed out with each of his long fingers pressed against it.

He cannot press through it, cannot reach the other side, can only wait and watch. He feels only whispers, suggestions, soft somethings that lurk and live beyond the veil, and he is caught in watching, in his self-appointed task.

Fairy-watcher, fairy-mad - some have said, passing James, that he is cursed. He looks out on the human world and ignores the revelers that pass behind him, the tall strange shapes clad in sumptuous silks and walking with the lightness of a butterfly’s wing.

Time passes, flows like a river, and the people he watches are caught up in it. They change as he watches. The world changes.

 

*****

_On either side the river lie_  
_Long fields of barley and of rye,_  
_That clothe the wold and meet the sky;_  
_And thro' the field the road runs by_

Oxford is as Robbie Lewis remembered it, all soaring towers and sun - bright stones, peaceful riverbanks and rolling meadows.

His ghosts have brought him back here, and he walks the half-familiar streets with them. Sometimes he thinks he can hear their voices, but then he turns a corner and sees a gaggle of students. Their voices have been distorted by the stone walls and echoes, becoming something that they are not. He cannot hear his own past.

Robbie walks, and walks, and walks. Sometimes he thinks the blond lad is with him - the tall, gangly copper he saw back at the station - he often sees him out of the corner of his eye. He sees him for a second, half a heartbeat - blinks, and then he is gone.

It makes no never mind, he tells himself. He wouldn't have wanted company on this walk, wouldn't have sought it out, but his memories are not enough, and he somehow doesn't mind this man being at his side. It is a strange comfort, but one he will not turn away.

He has a feeling that this shared silence is somehow different from the ones that he shared with Val - that there is something unsaid, something that he ought to say. But this man - Robbie doesn’t even know his name - slotted himself into the back seat of the car, folding his legs to fit as though he belonged there, and followed him to the crime scene, and followed him here.

Above and beyond the call of duty, Robbie would say, but he can’t bear to send him away. Maybe the lad is enjoying a walk, rambling along and not even here for Robbie at all.

He can hear the sound of bells ringing in the distance, the echoes of each brassy peal carried by the river water. There is the sound of the bells, and the sound of his footsteps, and the footsteps of the lad, all come together in point and counterpoint, somehow strangely like the rhythm of a poem or the stories that Robbie’s gran used to tell him. It is a song without words, but no words are needed.

The last bell dies away, shimmering echoes fading, and the sound of footsteps stops following Robbie. The silence is somehow heavier, weightier. He doesn’t turn to watch the lad go - he stays and watches the ripples of the river water, the flashes of sun and light and wind. He is, after a long day, glad that he’s come back to Oxford.

 

*****

_'I am half sick of shadows,' said_  
_The Lady of Shalott_.

James hears the bells before he sees the man - they are strong and pure, fairy-brassy bright. A shiver starts at the small of his back. It has been years since he has heard sound through the mirror.

He presses closer to it, and the silver warms under his skin. His breath makes a mist on the metal.

He scrubs at it, scrubs the mist away, and for a moment it feels as though he can reach through the mirror. Warm summer air, the soft and low sounds of a river running sharp and shallow, the rise and fall of lungs, of space, of breath -

The man who catches James’s attention is standing by a bridge. James presses at the mirror and it shimmers in the sparkling water, taking one reflection for another. He can see the man’s face.

There is something there - grief, yes, but strength and a quiet certainty, too. The man closes his eyes for a moment as though he is listening to the bells, hearing what James hears. The song that echoes here is a never-ending song, a siren call.

James hums to himself, and this time it is a half-forgotten song, some echo of his long-ago childhood. It carries with it the echoes of the bells and of the river and of the mirror. Music is enough to let him see - enough to take him to another place - enough to part the veil.

It is a moment’s work, a bell-clear decision that he can feel thrumming through his veins with the notes of the song. There is so much for James here - more than there ever was here at his mirror.

He passes through, leaving the echoes of fairy revelers and the _shush, shush_ of shimmering silks far behind him. He feels the warmth of the sunlight on his face and James blinks, then closes his eyes.

The bridge is empty now, but he knows where he wants to begin. _O brave new world, that has such people in't_ , he says to himself - some half-remembered fragment that lurks in his memory and has waited for this occasion - and he is ready now. James takes a deep breath of the sweet summer air, and takes his first step forward.


End file.
